


A Tiny Bit of Heaven

by LittleRaven



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer (TV), Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Original Trilogy, Star Wars Prequel Trilogy
Genre: Angst, Crossover, Crossovers & Fandom Fusions, Episode Related, Episode Tag, Episode: s06e03 After Life, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Force Ghost Anakin Skywalker, Force Ghost(s), Gen, Post-Star Wars: Return of the Jedi, reference to major character death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-15
Updated: 2018-12-15
Packaged: 2019-09-18 12:27:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,099
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16995000
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LittleRaven/pseuds/LittleRaven
Summary: Buffy does in fact have a hitchhiker who brought himself along upon her resurrection.





	A Tiny Bit of Heaven

**Author's Note:**

  * For [silveradept](https://archiveofourown.org/users/silveradept/gifts).



The air in Buffy’s room is stale. Her bed is still soft, still squeaky with her weight. 

She was dead, and now she isn’t. Buffy should find that interesting. She must, she thinks, because she isn’t thinking about anything else. The bandages on her hands sting. That’ll fade, she remembers. She heals fast. 

“I’m here,” says a voice. It is clear, clearer than that of the living, and still as too loud in her head.

She turns toward the blue shadow in the corner of her room. Buffy has forgotten his name. He is pretty, for all the monochrome look of him. Enough that it should matter to her more than it does. Well. Not feeling attracted to the dead; as if she needs another sign that this is all wrong. 

She nods, firmly. Then she rolls to face the opposite direction, breathes in, tries to sleep. The pillow smells like Dawn’s shampoo. 

 

He’s still there the next morning. Buffy ignores him as she eats, Tara’s pancakes a medley of flavors adding up to less than the sum of their parts. She can eat them. Dawn watches. She’s been watching since last night. Tara, too, and Willow and Xander and Spike. She can eat, and drink her coffee, just as always. Her tongue is leaden, but she pays it no mind; like the ghost, it’s feelings are secondary. Less than secondary. The last item, letter “z” on the list. 

He keeps trying to speak to her. Her friends are in the yard, her yard. They’re talking, not waiting for her, and that’s normal. Buffy takes her mug and heads out the door, wincing at the brightening light.

Her ghost doesn’t follow. 

 

Another demon, another day. With her friends, minus one Giles. Fine. She doesn’t tell them there’s more than one inter-dimensional hitchhiker. Buffy sits at the table in The Magic Box, not reading. She hears the rustle of the pages turning. A book slams closed, and she jumps. Xander notices; Buffy watches him look away, smiling too wide. Twitchy, just like her. 

It’s not hard to choose to leave. She has a job, after all. This is what they do. This is what she does. 

 

When she hits the cemetery, the ghost is back. On brand of him. 

He hasn’t, Buffy realizes, tried to get her attention when she’s been among the others, after the attempts at breakfast with Dawn.

She continues not to speak to him. This time, he does the same. He walks with her. His head is low, his intangible robes sweeping the grass. Like a bubble, almost. 

She looks down at her feet. The ground is solid. Packed. Heavy on her, she remembers, shuddering. It should still be there, over what Buffy had left behind, for the feeling she can’t place but knows. 

Beside her, Buffy’s ghost is brighter than the gray markers they pass by. He starts to reach for her. There’s a warmth she remembers. She had it. It’s not hers anymore. This place is cold, in the night, and so is she. 

Buffy turns on her heel to leave. 

She expects him to follow, now, and he does. Why not be haunted by what she’s left behind? It’s not as if he can carry her back, whoever he is. 

He is trying to take care, she realizes. As with her friends in the now. Trying, and asking her to make it so. To make it useful. She can’t give any of them what they’re looking for. It’s very nice, Buffy is sure, but she doesn’t remember how to be nice back. How to make it work. 

The sky is lightening, now. Time to get home, get back in bed, away from it. 

 

Drawing breath is difficult. The demon squeezes it out of her. In the edges of her vision, her shadow is there. 

“Buffy!”

She pays him no mind; her body is trying not to rejoin him.

“Buffy!”

The grip around her torso loosens; she ducks out of it, slides back toward the demon ax-first. 

Its head rolls. They watch it, silent. The flesh and smell of a rotting woman. The smell is familiar after all these years, and sharp, contained in her room. She turns to him first, reaches for the hands that had pulled it back by the throat. 

The house doors slam, and her ears are full of the footsteps rushing to her bedroom door. Buffy turns, poised to greet them.

He remains behind her. 

 

“So,” Buffy says, coming back in the house after Dawn has left. “You’re choosing to be my personal Casper.”

“I am choosing,” he tells her, raising a brow, “to help out a friend. It’d be nice if you didn’t give me nicknames.”

She meets his gaze, shrugs. “Yeah. Everyone’s being real helpful these days.” She blinks, and he slips out of focus.

“Buffy.”

She blinks again. There he is, watching her still. “Who are you?” 

She thinks she should apologize, at the look on his blue face, but it takes her too long to realize that. 

“Anakin. Don’t you remember?” He is closer, suddenly. Buffy squints at his shining form. She looks away, then goes to sit, halts at the coffee table. Her eyes find a magazine, stay on the _Vogue_ for a moment, before she turns back.

“There’s a lot that’s different.” After looking at the chairs, she picks the sofa, sinks down to watch her feet against the floor. 

He’s wordless, but he approaches again, slower. She can feel Anakin sit beside her, though he leaves no weight on the cushion. 

What a name. But it feels right. Not that she knows what a ghost she met in heaven should be called. 

Heaven. Buffy has always been too busy for abstractions, but it’s the word that fits. When she speaks, it is halting, though her voice is steady. 

“Wish I did. Remember. Where I was...I don’t know anything specific.” She raises her face to look at him again. “I know it was good. It felt right. Happy, at peace. Not like here.” 

“It was good.” His words are as slow as hers. “I wish I could bring you back. I do.”

He has come back with her instead. 

“But you’re alive. You’re alive,” he repeats, more firmly, “and I’m still your friend.”

“You are here,” she acknowledges. A tiny bit of heaven, more than the felt absence of memory.

“Yes,” he says. 

Her other friends are waiting. She’s not sure what she’ll tell them yet. They sit in the quiet, Anakin warm in his light, and Buffy leaning into the glow.


End file.
